Jason Stanley

Jason Stanley (born 1969) is an American philosopher who is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University.^[1][2] He has accepted an appointment at the University of Toronto based on what he describes as the deteriorating political situation in the United States.^[3][4]

He is best known for his contributions to philosophy of language and epistemology,^[5] which often draw upon and influence other fields, including linguistics and cognitive science.

In his more recent work, Stanley has brought tools from philosophy of language and epistemology to bear on questions of political philosophy, for example in his 2015 book, How Propaganda Works, and his 2023 book, The Politics of Language.^[6]

Stanley was raised in upstate New York in a Jewish family.^[7] He graduated from Corcoran High School in Syracuse, New York. During high school, he studied in Lünen, Germany, for one year as part of the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange.^[8] He enrolled first at Binghamton University, where he studied philosophy of language under Jack Kaminsky. In 1987, he transferred to University of Tübingen, but returned to New York in 1988 at Stony Brook University.^[8] There, he studied philosophy and linguistics under Peter Ludlow and Richard Larson. Stanley received his B.A. in May 1990.^[9] He went on to earn his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in January 1995, with Robert Stalnaker as his thesis advisor.^[9]

After receiving his doctorate, Stanley accepted a position at University College, Oxford, as a stipendiary lecturer. He returned to New York and taught at Cornell University until 2000. He was appointed an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.^[5] In 2004, he moved to the department of philosophy at Rutgers University, where he taught from 2004 to 2013. In March 2013 he accepted a professorship at Yale University.^[10]

Stanley is the author of several books, including How Propaganda Works (2015)^[11] and How Fascism Works (2018). As a philosopher of language^[12] and an authority on propaganda and fascism, Stanley's work often views contemporary politics and foreign affairs through the lens of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.^[13] He has been interviewed by Vox^[14][15] NPR,^[2] KCRW in Los Angeles;^[16] and WBUR in Boston.^[17]

On March 28, 2025, Stanley accepted a position at the University of Toronto's Munk School in Canada. He stated that he left the United States due to what he perceived to be America's descent into a fascist dictatorship.^[3][4] "I'll be in a much better position to fight bullies," he said.^[18]

Both of Stanley's parents emigrated to the United States from Europe – his father from Germany in 1939, and his mother from Poland. He grew up in upstate New York. He is the grandson of Ilse Stanley, who secured the release of 412 people from Nazi concentration camps from 1936 to 1938, and the great-grandson of the Berlin Cantor Magnus Davidsohn. Stanley describes his Jewish background as informing his writing on fascism: "To me, my Judaism means an obligation to pay attention to equality and the rights of minority groups."^[7]

Stanley is divorced^[19] from cardiologist Njeri K. Thande, with whom he has two sons. In 2025, both Stanley and Thande chose to move to Canada. Stanley said, "We are leaving for our kids primarily so they can grow up under conditions of freedom."^[19] Stanley likened his departure for Canada to leaving Germany in 1932, 33, 34. "I don't see it as fleeing at all," he said. "I see it as joining Canada, which is a target of Trump, just like Yale is a target of Trump." He told the Daily Nous, a professional philosophy website, that he decided "to raise my kids in a country that is not tilting towards a fascist dictatorship".^[4]

His book Knowledge and Practical Interests won the 2007 American Philosophical Association book prize.^[20]

In 2016, Stanley earned a PROSE Award in philosophy for his book How Propaganda Works.^[21]

• Stanley, Jason (2005). Knowledge and Practical Interests. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-922592-7.
• Stanley, Jason (2007). Language in Context: Selected Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-923043-3.
• Stanley, Jason (2011). Know How. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19969536-2.
• Stanley, Jason (2015). How Propaganda Works. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-069116442-7. - Article: How Propaganda Works
• Stanley, Jason (2018). How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-52551183-0.
• Stanley, Jason; Beaver, David (2023). The Politics of Language. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691181981.
• Stanley, Jason (2024). Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. New York: Atria/One Signal Publishers. ISBN 978-1-6680-5691-2.

• Staff Homepage at Yale University

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